After four weeks of travelling in Thailand, I’m in a much better position to comment than I was when I wrote of my Thai expectations. I was looking forward to the newness, the un-Europeanness, the un-Americanness. I was looking for something different. And yes, I found it. But in that newness, there was also a sameness. Anyway, I thought I might save you some angst and share with you my travel tips for Thailand. Read more

I asked for quiet. For peace. For empty beaches and fresh nice food. I asked for local cooking, small bars, and good coffee. I asked for sunsets and sunrises and a door that opened to the sea. They said the quiet was impossible. Not in Thailand. Never in Thailand. Everywhere has people. Everywhere is crowded. Everywhere is popular. I was hrummphed on a number of travel forums when I asked for suggestions. But himself found it. Koh Yao Noi. Read more

Our second night in Kanchanaburi. I’d busted my foot jumping from a height to catch sight of the train looming down the death railway, so I decided to stay put. Himself was itching to get out – probably away from me, if the truth be told – so he went wandering. He did what he usually does and followed the music. This is what he found.Read more

Although nearly three weeks in Thailand, I’m still shackled by Western expectations. The first thing we did when we arrived in Kanchanaburi on Wednesday was head to the train station to book tickets to Surat Thani for Friday morning.

Two tickets to Surat Thani, please. Second class. Aircon. With seat reservations. On the 9.35. On Friday, says I, not for a minute thinking that he’d do anything but smile politely and hand them over. Instead, he laughed.

Friday? All trains full, he said. Saturday, too. And Sunday. Read more

Our bus trip from Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai passed without incident …. until I spotted my mate through the window at the terminus, jumped off, and left my camera behind me. So excited at the thoughts of seeing him after a gap of 17 years, I lost the run of myself. We were on the road home before I noticed. What was to be a peaceful, trouble-free week hadn’t started off too well. But the girl on the ticket desk was very helpful. She made a few calls, and told me to come back in a hour. When I did, I’d be reunited with my camera. I’d been pretty ticked off when himself had left his phone on the steps of Wat Arun and hadn’t noticed till we’d crossed the river and disembarked the ferry. Thanks to a chap we’d bought a painting from and the auspices of a good monk, he got it back. But now it was my turn. On the double. Read more

I’ve missed mass for two Sundays in a row. I’m excused though, as I’m travelling. Anyway, the only Catholic church I’ve seen was from a boat. But Tuesday was a Buddha day in Thailand. They don’t do Sundays, as we Roman Catholics do. Thailand practises Theravada Buddhism in accordance with the four lunar phases: the new moon, the full moon, and the two quarter moons. On these days, the faithful get together at the temple, bring their offerings, and pray. And in Chiang Rai, my friends invited me to go with them to Wat Phra Kaew. I didn’t need to be asked twice. Read more

Had we done it right, we’d have gotten to P̣hū chī̂f̂ā (Phu Chi Fa) in time to see the sunrise. From what I’ve read, we’d have been in the company of hundreds of Thais and a handful of Western tourists who’d made the journey north of Chiang Rai to this rather special, spectacular place. [A little like the hordes that descend on La Boca, Cuba, to see the sunset.] Phu Chi Fa, which translates as pointing to the sky, is a mountain area and national forest park in Thailand in the northeastern end of the Phi Pan Nam Range, 12 km to the southwest of Doi Pha Tang at the eastern edge of Thoeng District in Chiang Rai Province. The drive from Chiang Rai through the farmland and the rice fields and the villages is the stuff that novels are made of. Read more

The city of Chiang Saen in Northern Thailand was once the capital of the Lanna Kingdom. It’s had a turbulent history, captured by the Burmese in the sixteenth century and then plundered by King Rama I in the early 1800s. It was left for dead for about a 100 years before gradually being reborn. It’s still enjoying its childhood years though, and has a ways to go before it’s fully grown again. Today, it’s probably most famous for its proximity to the Golden Triangle. We drove around the neighbourhoods marvelling at the old city walls and the ruined stupas and chedis. We stopped by the Mekong River and looked across at Laos, unable to see much with the low-lying cloud but it was nice to know it was there. Read more

When I’m anxious, I don’t sleep. I get antsy. And I’m early. We were at the train station in Ayutthaya about an hour before the train was due to leave, having shared a taxi with a couple of American tourists who also stayed in our Homestay. They were houseless and jobless making the move from CA to NY – he had taken the NY bar exam and was waiting for results. In the meantime, they were travelling. I was bricking it, wondering if our tickets would be fake. For one heart-stopping moment, I thought we were done. Someone was sitting in seat 26. But then I checked our seats and we had 27 and 28. Empty. Whew. We sat and fretted until the ticket inspector had checked our tickets and marked us off on his paper plan of the carriage. I can’t tell you what the relief felt like. We were on our way to Chiang Mai. Read more

I woke up on Sunday with a horrible feeling that everything that could go wrong, would go wrong. So much for Murphy being an optimist. We were heading to Ayutthaya, some 80 km north of Bangkok. The scam-merchant for whose patter we’d fallen was to send a driver to take us to the station. And he did. He came. He collected. And he deposited us at the station where he bought our train tickets, handed them to us, parked us at the platform and went on his way. It was only after he’d left that I checked to see what seat we had and in which carriage, given that we were to have a seat in second class with air conditioning. But no. The scam continued. We had the cheapest of seats – some 20 baht (about 55 cents) – third class standing. No aircon. And on Thai Rail, the journey to Ayutthaya would take some 90 minutes. The fishwives of Moore Street would have taken me for one of their own, such was the litany of names I called him.

We boarded and sat for about 10 minutes before we were ousted by passengers who had seat reservations. Read more

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